


Never Say Never Again

by NervousAsexual



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Anxiety, Basically it's Die Hard With Cranky Retirees, Depression, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Old Married Leonard "Bones" McCoy/Spock, not as dark as the tags imply
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28894566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual
Summary: When intergalactic espionage turns a diplomatic dinner into a night of danger, Spock and Leonard must put retirement aside for the good of the many.
Relationships: Leonard "Bones" McCoy/Spock
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35
Collections: Spones Reverse Big Bang (2020-2021)





	Never Say Never Again

**Author's Note:**

> Featuring art from [AutumnInAprilArt!](https://spones-in-my-bones.tumblr.com/post/640940893082451968/leonard-reached-for-his-hand-may-i-for-a)  
> Behold:  
> 

After Spock had not-pouted for three days, Leonard had finally had enough.

"Look," he said, cornering Spock in the kitchen, "nobody appreciates a good mope like I do. But you're depressing the houseplants."

Both of them turned to the south-facing windows. The flowers on the Kalanchoe, which had once been a very pretty orange, had turned pale, the leaves on the orchid were browning at the tips, and the miniature pepper plant was drooping sadly from its post.

"I believe the state of the plants is based more on your watering schedule and less on my emotional state."

"And I believe in gremlins that live in the washer and steal socks, darlin'. Doesn't make it true."

Spock said nothing.

Leonard reached for his hand. "May I?"

For a moment a doubtful look crossed Spock's face, but he nodded and allowed Leonard to twine their fingers together.

At one point, years and years ago, Spock had objected to this sort of meld. He was the vulcan. He was the one in control of his emotions. What would it help to add Leonard's generally chaotic emotions to the mix? But today, standing together in the kitchen, he let himself feel what Leonard was feeling.

There was a stillness in Leonard that hadn't been there the first time. In their days on the Enterprise they had shared a mind meld only a few times, almost always during difficult times. The first time they melded on accident, deep in the heart of Minara II, Leonard had been tangle of emotions that Spock had doubted they could ever resolve. Fear, pain, sadness, a bit of smugness at how he'd successfully protected his friends, even at the cost of his own life, and, almost lost in the static, a hint of contentment. He had assumed at the time that the contentment and smugness had been connected--Leonard always had been self-sacrificing to a fault--and it wasn't until after that he realized that Leonard had been in pain long before the Vians got their hands on him.

For years afterward he'd been aware of every emotion Leonard projected, even when they were not touching. There were patterns to be analyzed there; things would be stable for a while, and then his mood would take a dive. Even when he didn't actually want to die Leonard's emotions could trigger a meltdown in Spock.

But today, Leonard was calm. It felt good to close his eyes and let that patient, relaxed mindset chase his own fears away.

"You'll do great."

Six months ago the human ambassador to Andoria had asked him to speak at a formal dinner about his experiences in Starfleet. He had accepted, naturally; there was no logical reason to decline. It was his first time speaking publicly in a long while, but he had been a lecturer at Starfleet's San Francisco campus for years and he assumed he would be fine.

Ironically enough, his anxieties only spiked after he began lecturing again.

"It has been a long time," he said. "I... I should refresh myself on Andorian customs. It would not be helpful to cause a diplomatic incident."

"Which kind? The kind where the tellarite ambassador is murdered or the kind where the klingon gets murdered?"

"Your chosen examples are not helping, Leonard."

Leonard chuckled. "I suppose not. But look on the bright side--at least your father won't be there."

There was a kind of buzz in Leonard's emotions at that. He was making a joke, though Spock could not determine what kind. He laughed politely to be safe.

"You'll be fine. What's the worst that could happen?" When Spock started to speak he raised a hand to cut him off. "You know I'm the catastrophizer in this relationship. Allow me." He cleared his throat. "You will be speaking at the dinner and there will be an Andorian spy in the crowd, who is radiating such hate for the human ambassador that you get pulled in and begin describing in detail what he wants to do to the ambassador. The rest of the delegation won't understand what's going on and will throw you in prison, where you'll be constantly surrounded by the strongest emotions, which will in turn drive you insane. You will snap, murder your way out of the prison, set fire to a shelter for abandoned kittens, re-endanger the world's whale population, and spend the rest of your life living in a cave somewhere and eating the bones of any animals that cross your path. Am I close?"

The overwrought drama of it all brought a smile to Spock's face. "That's much worse than forgetting my notes and going blank mid-speech."

"Isn't it? And you don't need to worry about it, because if you begin reciting all the ways to murder an ambassador I will tie you up in a tablecloth and drag you out of there."

"I am greatly comforted, doctor. Thank you."

Leonard squeezed his hand gently. "Any time."

* * *

The lurian coat-check was very excited to hear Spock's talk. He gushed on and on about how fascinating he'd always found the stories that surrounded the original Enterprise's five year mission, and he was glad to hear the record put straight once and for all by someone who was there. Leonard, grinning more than a little smugly, handed over his coat and tapped Spock's arm. "I'm going to find our seats. Maybe your friend here will help you go over your notes?"

The lurian became almost hysterical at that idea. Spock allowed himself one moment of disdainful glaring but Leonard, unscathed, disappeared into the dining hall.

"Mr. Spock," the lurian said. A momentary distraction came in the form of another small group arriving from the outside. The breeze from the door tipped over the many small flags suction-cupped to the lurian's desk, which took some time to right again, but the lurian did not let that phase him. As he worked he explained to Spock how very much he'd always wanted to join Starfleet, and the fact that there were no lurians in Starfleet currently only encouraged him to work harder, and he hoped one day to be a science officer on an exploratory mission, just as Spock had been...

By the time Spock extricated himself from the lurian's conversation the coat check line was backed up into the atrium and Spock himself was very glad to find the dining hall quiet and uncrowded. He located Leonard near the head of the table, picking at the collar of his shirt.

"Now I remember why we never wear these," he said as Spock took his seat beside him. "Why didn't you talk me out of this?"

There were a number of reasons--Leonard no longer had a dress uniform that didn't hang off him like a tablecloth, neither of them were active members of Starfleet anymore, and, of course, Spock always wore whatever Leonard lay out for him--but there was only one reason he cared to give. "Because you look very aesthetically pleasing in it, Leonard."

Leonard continued to grumble, but his cheeks and the tips of his ears turned a bright pink. "Flatterer."

Spock took in the dining hall carefully, noting official and potential exits, places where one could hide from sight, and the number and density of chairs clustered around the large rectangle formed by the dining tables. He was aware that Leonard would tease him about this if he were aware, but the fact that he'd secreted a hypospray into his bag had not escaped Spock's notice. They each had their own way of handling uncertainty.

Leonard's sensory issues did not mix well with the level of ornamentation on the shirt and he continued to pick at the detailing of the collar until even the expert stitching threatened to give. Without breaking his survey of the room Spock took Leonard's hand in his and lowered it to the tabletop. "I presume you brought the necklace?"

"Hm." Leonard glanced through his bag and pulled out a soft string necklace. Once it had held a pendant of the word _ashaya_ in Vulcan script, but pendants were not something Leonard wore frequently. Luckily the clasp--a synthesized plastic piece that clicked together and apart easily enough for Leonard to handle with his increasingly arthritic fingers--was, in Leonard's words, fiddlable. Spock let go of his hand and watched as Leonard clicked the clasp together and apart, together and apart.

"Still nervous?" he asked.

Spock thought for a moment. "Yes. But I will survive it."

Leonard made as if to answer, but before he could speak a familiar human in subdued but intricate dress swooped in between the two of them.

"Mr. Spock!" he fairly crowed. "I can't tell you how excited I am to have you speaking tonight!"

"Ambassador Soares." Spock nodded to him and reached around in front of him to take Leonard's hand in his. "I don't believe you've met my husband, Dr. McCoy."

"No, but I hear only the best things." Seemingly unaware of the inconvenience of his presence, Soares beamed happily. "And please, call me Charles."

So he had not yet given up on that, Spock thought. During their exchange of messages he had always addressed the ambassador by his proper name and title, while the ambassador had signed only his first name in what seemed to be an increasingly emphatic manner.

"What are you doing these days, Dr. McCoy?" the ambassador asked. "Enjoying your retirement?"

"Something like that." Spock felt a fleeting sense of loneliness in him--Leonard rarely spoke of it but he knew that staying home in the apartment most days was not something he enjoyed. There had been talk of volunteering, or even of taking part-time employment, but nothing had come of it.

"I could never retire. I'm too wrapped up in my work. Retirement would bore me." Soares laughed. "I need a hobby or something. Oh, there's Thrishin." He waved across the room at an approaching Andorian. "If you gentlemen will excuse me..."

Spock and Leonard watched him go.

"Well," Leonard said at last, "you weren't kidding about the... friendliness."

"You know that I never 'kid.'" He watched as the Andorian--she was also an ambassador, he realized; he had never met Thrishin Zh'veqon, ambassador to Starfleet, but he had seen her picture on news vids. "But yes. He is what one might call 'a lot.'"

"Yeah. Hold on, you've got a..." Leonard wiped a smudge of eye shadow off his face. He took Spock's head in both hands and looked him over critically. Spock took a moment to enjoy the feeling of Leonard's hands on his face. Leonard was a little nervous, but not as much as Spock, and he was feeling something else, too.

Pride, Spock realized. He was feeling proud of Spock.

"Doing alright?" Leonard asked him.

Carefully, tenderly, Spock took his hands in his and lowered them to the table. "I am. And you?"

"Never better."

Not long after the guests began to arrive and Spock's attention was drawn elsewhere. He made sure that Leonard was still alright--he was chatting with a human in a Starfleet sciences uniform--and forced himself to 'mingle.'

It was, to borrow a hyperbolic phrase from Leonard, absolute torture. At the best of times Spock tolerated small talk, but never before had he made small talk with so very many people at one time. This was really more Leonard's sort of thing than Spock's. But when he looked over Leonard glanced up as well, and smiled, and waved. He nodded in return. He thought of the house plants. Somehow he survived.

Survival, he learned when the screams began to echo through the dining hall, was not a given.

He was talking to an Andorian academic about the streamlining of replicator tech when it happened. There was a whine like phaser fire and the distinctive _thump_ of a body striking the floor, and guests began to pour into the dining hall. For the shortest of moments Spock was relieved. Violence typically precludes small talk. Unfortunately, the nature of violence was, in fact, violent.

He slipped through the rush of guests, swimming against the current. Their emotions were running high (fear, mostly, but confusion as well) and their body heat was everywhere and it was already exhausting. He ducked around a decorative column and found himself in the cool, nearly empty atrium.

An andorian and a romulan were gathered around someone lying on the floor. A quick survey of the room revealed no obvious places to hide and no immediate indication of where the phaser fire had originated. Behind him he could hear the sound of Southern indignation approaching through the crowd.

"One side. Coming through. Oh, beg your pardon, ma'am. Move!"

Leonard emerged from the crowd, which seemed to be actively trying to pull him back in. He jerked his dress shirt straight and made his way toward the gathered gawkers.

"Either one of you doctors?" he asked the andorian and the romulan. "No? Then move over."

He elbowed his way between them like he was thirty years younger again. It brought a small pleased smile to Spock's face. When he too made his way over he found Leonard crouched down beside the lurian coat checker, tearing back his uniform to get at the phaser burn.

"M-mr. Spock?" the lurian asked in a shaky voice. "Am I going to die?"

"Not if I have anything to say about it," Leonard grumbled. He pulled out that hypospray he'd hidden away in his bag and jabbed it into the lurian's arm. "Damn it. Spock, see if you can get me some fresh water. Clear as you can get it." And when Spock left to do that: "And no ice water, either!"

Seeing Leonard fall right back into the role he'd loved so much made a small portion of Spock's heart grow softer, which was a bit of a relief, because Spock had seen something that the others had not. The flags suction-cupped to the lurian's desk were all upright.

Whoever had fired that phaser had not left by the front door.

* * *

The dining hall was in an uproar.

The banquet tables nearest the door had been overturned in the rush to leave the atrium. Multiple voices shouted that someone should call for security, though no one seemed to have actually done so. A small group of humans had gathered near the door to the atrium, telling everyone that it wasn't really phaser fire they'd heard, it was just somebody trying to get a rise out of them and didn't the rest of them feel stupid that they'd fallen for it. Spock noticed that they stayed clear of the atrium itself, though.

He made his way through the crowd to the swinging doors that concealed the kitchen and ducked inside, where he narrowly avoided being clobbered with a frying pan. The arc of it swinging stopped just short and a human chef emerged from behind the door.

"Who the hell are you?" the human asked.

Spock ignored him. "I am looking for fresh water."

"Spigot beside the dishwasher." The chef frowned at him. "Now, again: who the hell are you?"

"I am Spock," Spock said. He appropriated a stew pot from the dishwasher and looked it over. Clean enough. It would have to do.

"Okay. And what the hell is going on?"

Spock set the pot to filling. Over the rattle of water in the empty pot he said, "Phaser fire. I am unsure who or why."

"Oh sweet jesus." The chef struggled to pull off his apron and flung it into a corner. "I'm getting out of here."

"I would not recommend it. Such an action would only cause you to look more suspicious."

"Better suspicious than dead."

This was, Spock had to admit, a fair point. "Is there an exit in the dining hall?"

"Nope." The chef took down his coat and hat from the refrigerator and jammed the brim down over his ears. "Just this one."

And with that he kicked open the delivery door and was gone.

No one could have left the building, Spock reasoned as he staggered out the door under the weight of the pot of water. Had anyone left by the front exit the flags on the desk would have been overturned, and had anyone left by the delivery door in the kitchen the chef would have noticed. Therefore it was logical to assume that whoever had shot the coat-check was still in the building somewhere. He said as much to Leonard.

"Don't tell me that," Leonard snapped. "Where the hell is security?"

"That is a question I would like an answer to as well." Spock crouched down beside the coat-check. "Did you see who or what shot you?"

The lurian shook his head. "I was talking to Ambassador Soares when it happened. He was trying to get me to stop admitting people. I told him if they have invitations there's nothing I can do about it, and then bang!" He threw out his arms, causing Leonard to dump water on the both of them. "Ouch."

"For god's sake." Leonard reached again for the tricorder he wasn't wearing and hadn't worn in decades. "Give me a minute to get this wrapped up and I'll call security myself."

"No need." Spock put a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to project calm thoughts to Leonard and also because he was unsure he could un-crouch without falling over. "I'll call them." He climbed to his feet and stood there wobbling for a moment to ensure he wouldn't immediately fall over at his first step. "Are there call numbers, extensions, anything like that I should know about?"

The lurian was quiet for a moment, but when Leonard nudged him he jumped. "Oh. Oh! Um, you have to dial an eight before you can call out of the building."

"Thank you." This was, Spock thought to himself, not exactly better than public speaking but definitely no worse. He came around behind the desk and looked over the computer, comm system, the flags, and...

...and even more phaser fire rang out. It was incredibly loud. It was dangerously close.

Without even thinking Spock threw himself down to the floor just as the shot passed within an inch of where his head had been. It struck the wall and a second shot hit the ceiling, sending a cascade of broken ceiling tile and singed plaster over him. Leonard, he thought. He at least had the desk between him and whoever was shooting, but Leonard was out there in the middle of the atrium, totally exposed.

"Doctor?" he called. He dragged himself toward the corner of the desk, barely aware of the shooting pain in his knee. "Leonard? Are you hurt?"

"We're peachy," Leonard called back. "Call the damn security."

"No!"

The voice, vaguely familiar and totally panicked, was accompanied by three more phaser shots, from the sound of which seemed to strike the atrium floor. Spock crawled around to take stock and saw Leonard and the lurian, the latter of whom looked mere moments away from screaming and the former of whom had thrown his body over that of his patient. The sight of it made Spock's heart twist in a bittersweet way. That was Leonard, self-sacrificing as always. He looked away from the two huddled figures to the dining hall door. There, phaser still pointed at the others, a look of forced calmness on her face, stood a tall, slender Andorian. "Ambassador Thrishin?"

"Mr. Spock." The Andorian ambassador looked away from Leonard and the lurian and made the briefest of eye contact with Spock. "I'm very sorry that this is how we must meet. I've always been fascinated by stories of your work on the Enterprise."

"Join the club," Leonard muttered. Even at a distance Spock could feel the adrenaline pounding through him.

"Thank you." Spock still had no idea how to respond to these sentiments. "I would say that I'm pleased to meet you, but it is difficult to be pleased with someone who is pointing a phaser at my husband."

"As I said." Thrishin looked from him to Leonard and back. "I wish we could meet under different circumstances, but I can't allow you to call security before I am ready." She paused again, considering each of the three in the atrium. "Dr. McCoy, would you please come over here?"

"I'm fine here, thanks."

"Please come over here," Thrishin said, "or I will shoot you and drag you over here."

Leonard turned a bit, glancing back at Spock. "She makes a compelling argument."

Spock nodded. What else could he do?

"Quickly, doctor." Thrishin glanced back over her shoulder.

"If you wanted a quick hostage," Leonard snapped (not quite drowning out the sound of his knees cracking as he stood), "you should've picked somebody spry."

Instead of answering the Andorian ambassador crossed the atrium quickly. Taking Leonard by the arm she hauled him up to his feet. She kept looking back into the dining hall, where, Spock noticed, a crowd was beginning to form. Why, he wondered, weren't they stampeding as they had previously?

"Age before beauty." Thrishin gestured at the door with her phaser. "Mr. Spock? ...coat-check person?"

"My name is..."

"I don't care."

Spock stood, his own joints popping and clicking, and carefully edged around the desk. He extended a hand to the coat-check.

"Quickly." Thrishin tapped her foot in a very human manner. "For the love of... Fine. Take your sweet time here and we'll head in. Just remember who it is I'm walking with, got it?"

She took Leonard by the scruff of his neck and forced him ahead of her into the dining hall. Spock said nothing. His jaw felt abnormally tight, but he couldn't tell whose fear it was he was feeling.

"Mr. Spock?"

Spock looked down at the coat-check, whose terrified eyes were fixed on him.

"Is the doctor going to die?"

"No," Spock said, and he believed it with an absurdly human level of certainty. They had both died once before. Once was more than enough.

Leonard stumbled into the dining hall when the Andorian gave him a shove, barely keeping his footing and already picturing in his head the many x-rays of broken hips he’d seen over the years. That would be his luck, wouldn’t it. All of the absurdly dangerous things he’d ended up doing for Spock and Jim and the Enterprise, and he’d wind up with a walker thanks to some stuffed-shirt ambassador.

“Where is Soares?” Thrishin demanded of the crowd.

No one answered. There was a spattering of hushed whispering, but no one person spoke.

“Where is he?” Thrishin stepped closer. “One of you must have seen him.”

"Of course we've seen him," Leonard snapped at her. The smell of Andorian ale on her breath made him gag. "Everybody here has seen him. Doesn't mean we know where the hell he is now."

"Quiet." The ambassador ran her free hand over her antennae. “I know he’s here. So somebody better start talking before I start shooting.”

Many nervous gazes were exchanged. No one answered. No one spoke at all for a long moment, and then, as the ambassador’s finger twitched on the trigger of her phaser, a quiet voice came forward.

“I have a question,” Spock asked as he assisted the coat-check into the dining hall. “Are there not easier ways to pursue a conversation with a colleague?”

The ambassador gave him a withering look, as if he was a particularly simple child. “This conversation is not only between me and him. This is a statement.”

She began to tell a story then, something convoluted with years of Andorian-Federation relations and personal slights, something she presumed would justify this sort of behavior, but Spock did not especially care about her reasons. He fixed his eyes on Leonard’s and without saying a word or closing the distance between him he asked if he were hurt.

No, Leonard’s eyes told him. He was not hurt, or at least no more than usual. He was very irritated, “royally ticked off,” he would undoubtedly put it, but there was no indication he was so much as frightened. In a way this was something of a relief. As they had grown older Spock had begun to realize that he had a great deal of fear himself. Even now, years later, as a retired lecturer and careful student of the art of Bingo, he still could call to mind all the deaths he’d seen on the Enterprise and elsewhere. His anxiety sometimes got the better of him, as Leonard’s dysthymia sometimes did him, but perhaps that was what made them work so well together. They complemented each other in a way one might describe as beautiful.

He looked into Leonard’s eyes and felt a calmness settle over him.

“Those who are responsible,” Ambassador Thrishin was now screaming, “must be made to pay.”

Spock remained unclear on what exactly those who were responsible held responsibility for but he nodded solemnly. “I understand. I believe, however, you owe this young person an apology.” He patted the lurian lightly on the shoulder.

“Who, me?” The lurian’s eyes widened in alarm.

“You were attempting to shoot the ambassador, were you not?”

“It’s okay.” The lurian wriggled free and evacuated himself from the scene. “Accidents happen. Sorry about your colony, Ambassador. Um, and your exploratory ship? And your xenobotanist…”

“I don’t want your apologies,” Thrishin snapped. “I want Soares.”

“Maybe he left,” suggested a very small, evidently very brave Andorian. She was dressed in a catering uniform, which supported this descriptor. “He could have gone out through the door in the kitchen.”

The crowd gave a scandalized roar.

“There’s a door in the kitchen?”

“Get out of the way, I have children to think of!”

“You have a cat!”

And, understandably, they began to swarm toward the kitchen.

“Stop it!” Thrishin screamed. She stamped her foot, drawing absolutely no one’s attention, and Spock saw his chance. He moved in, reaching for the phaser with one hand and the ambassador’s neck with the other. There was a flash of light—the phaser was on him, how did she move that quickly, he hadn’t moved that slowly—and the smell of burnt hair and then something solid slammed into his chest and suddenly he was on the floor looking up.

What an impractical style of ceiling, he thought, looking up at the popcorn ceiling far above him. It occurred to him that breathing was unreasonably difficult.

“Damn you!” Thrishin aimed a kick at his side, missed, and spun to grab Leonard by the back of the neck. He hissed in pain as she drove the phaser into the side of his head. “Why must everything be such an ordeal?”

Leonard opened his mouth, presumably to make some kind of smart remark. Spock met his eyes and shook his head.

“This isn’t a game!” The ambassador had to shout to be heard over the stampeding of the crowd. “The entire colony fell apart because of him! Because he couldn’t find his own damned xenobiologist!”

Spock summoned up his energy and dragged himself upright. “There are other, more appropriate channels for justice, ambassador.” His eyes fell on Leonard again. His husband’s hand was hovering over Thrishin’s shoulder, and he found himself scratching under the excessively fancy collar of his formal wear.

“Justice? You think this is about justice? This is about gardening, you green-blooded…”

At which point Leonard lowered his hand to pinch her neck quite firmly and she toppled to the ground, unconscious.

* * *

When the Andorians invited him to speak they had told Spock the dinner would end no later than eleven. This was a very important point at the time, because after his retirement from Starfleet Spock found that the more sleep he got the better his mood and he had noticed a similar pattern with Leonard. This, too, Thrishin had ruined. It was nine the next morning before the two of them finally stumbled into the apartment.

“Next time you get invited to a dinner, I think I’ll stay home.” Leonard balled up his dress shirt and threw as hard as he could into the kitchen. The shirt traveled barely a few feet and landed in a heap at the foot of the replicator.

“Next time I’m invited to a dinner I will not be attending the dinner.” Spock sank down at the kitchen table, wincing as the pain in his hip flared up. It wasn’t broken, the emergency medical technicians had assured him, but he wouldn’t be fully convinced until Leonard told him the same thing.

With a chuckle Leonard disappeared into the living room. “Was it better or worse than you thought it would be?”

“Pardon?”

“Exchanging the public speaking for the threat of violence. Better or worse?”

“I will reserve judgement until Ambassador Soares is located.”

“I’m sure he’s crawling around in the vents somewhere. He’s probably had a great adventure tonight.”

Spock pictured the human ambassador moving through oversized ventilation shafts like the hero of a twenty-first century adventure movie. It brought a small smile to his face. “Whatever happens with the ambassador, there is one bright spot.”

Leonard emerged from the backroom, already in his nightclothes.

“Yeah?” he asked, tossing back a handful of pills with a tall glass of water. “What’s that?”

“At least my father was not there.”

Leonard laughed and laughed, and Spock felt a sense of warmth and peace he had missed.

“Come on,” his ashayam said at last. “Let’s go to bed.”

“Another bright spot,” he said, allowing Leonard to help him to his feet.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

Spock pointed to the windowsill. As before the orchid and pepper plant and Kalanchoe were lined up in the sunshine, but the peppers looked perkier and a new batch of flowers had bloomed on the Kalanchoe and a new bright green leaf had started to emerge on the orchid.

“How about that,” Leonard said. “You aren’t depressing the plants anymore.”

For a moment he wanted to deny it and take comfort in their usual bickerings, but instead he pressed two fingers lightly against Leonard’s wrist. “It is good to be home.”

Leonard smiled at him and laid his hand against Spock’s face. His fingers brushed his hair back behind his ear. Spock closed his eyes and leaned forward, and as their foreheads rested against one another he felt a familiar sense of calm coming over them both.


End file.
